The fragility of Vini Reilly, the Manchester antihero who honored Buenaventura Durruti with his group

2023-10-02 23:06:19

The Return of the Durutti Column (The Return of the Durruti Column) is the title of a four-page comic that was part of a pamphlet distributed during student protests at the University of Strabourg in October 1966. Its author, the student André Bertrand, created it following the Guy Debord’s situationist postulates. Ten years later, Malcolm McLaren and designer Jamie Reid used the same sources to give punk ideology, giving shape to the anarchy that the Sex Pistols invoked.

Shortly after, in 1978, Situationism once again inspired revolutionary actions and aesthetics within the realm of pop. Interested in the European avant-garde of the first half of the 20th century, businessman Tony Wilson suggested to one of the bands he had just signed for the Factory label the name The Durutti Column (wrongly writing the last name of the anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, a hero of the Civil War), which he took from the aforementioned comic. That band’s music, ethereal, unreal, sometimes as fragile as its leader, guitarist Vini Reilly, never attracted the masses. But its beauty is still alive 50 years later, although a recent interview in the British newspaper The Guardian has drawn attention to his state of health and the validity of his music, thanks to a reissue.